Arcadia

59

One ordinary afternoon in late June, while watching the rain, it suddenly occurred to me that I had never seen a flower bloom.

It was curious, I had never cared much for flowers, unless they were cut up and ready to be preserved in glass vases for a few more days before they die. The ones on trees looked too bland and sad. Flowers are only beautiful to me when they are growing by the sewer, and even then it's for the symbolic meaning of it. I have lost my eye for appreciation of beauty. But then we live in a postmodern world, as the professor I both love and hate never fails to remind us, and beauty is a construct.

But to return to the problem at hand, I have never seen a flower bloom. I have seen freshly bloomed flowers (as the flower-shop keeper grinned and displayed his teeth and insisted they were) and I have seen flower buds, but I have never been in the moment when a bud changed to a flower, the exact moment of birth. I have seen flowers fall from trees, I thought almost in way of compensation. I wonder if death compensates for birth, or whether, as the professor I love and hate might say, they too are constructs and relative in their meaning. But that, perhaps, is going too far.

(Living in a postmodern world is a farce)

I don't understand why it bothers me so much, not having seen a flower bloom. I have seen the rain fall, I have seen the dust dance in the sun like moths in the summer, I have seen cockroaches make love, I have seen the morning bus halt and people climb on it like ants. I have seen the sea. I have seen enough of life, and though I like to take on the pretense of old age claim to have seen all there is to see, I haven't - I am still young, there is time enough.

But I couldn't get it out of my head. I found myself trying to imagine what it would be like, the blooming of a flower, does it open up like a woman, slowly, one petal after another, or does all at once with a soft 'pop' ? Or perhaps it is neither, or perhaps both, or perhaps something in-between. Or perhaps, like most things, it was something one shouldn't try to put into words, for words limit and define. Words limit and define everything that is poetic, how ironic.

(The professor that I love and hate says that the best book every written would be one with blank pages)

Anyhow, I wouldn't know till I have seen it. I might have to wake up early and go for a walk, but that is difficult, I live in the city and stay up all night, like city-people do. It's hard to find flowers in the city too, that early in the morning when the streets are dry and the dogs are asleep and the only people about are the gap-toothed ragpickers with leering smiles. Their eyes are cruel. They are dangerous. They are hungry.

(I wonder if the city is a social construct too, or the morning. Or hunger.)

But I don't think the best book ever written is one with blank pages, I think it is The Waves by Virginia Woolf, and I wear my hair short to keep out the heat and I pretend I am old and have seen everything that is to see. I like to watch the rain on an ordinary afternoon in late June. I am yet to see a flower bloom. I am young, and as it is in the nature of youth, perhaps a little deluded. I hope I may be forgiven.

But then, even youth is a construct. Our bodies wither, everything else is arbitrary. I still have time. There is hope for us yet.